#I let him play music on our work trips both because I'm self-conscious about my music tastes but also because his SLAPS

[alexdarke]

Hi! First off, love to you both -- it's been awesome watching your guys' trip through pictures and vids. Second: I've been gravitating towards more queer-oriented art/film/literature lately as I've become more confident/conscious of my own queerness. I just read E.M. Forster's "Maurice" as well as the two-part play "The Inheritance" by Matthew Lopez, and both have left such a lasting impression on me. I'm currently reading "Less" by Andrew Sean Greer and I'm really falling in love with it.(1of2)

(2of2) SO, with taking in a lot of queer literature lately, what are some of your favorite queer literature/film/art/etc. picks that you could recommend? I want to hear more about what speaks to previous generations of (specifically) gay/bi men and learn from it so as to have a better understanding of the community I belong to.             

===============================Put both halves together so it would be coherent. First and foremost: awwww. thanks. :) Secondly: What a great question! I am happy to answer, but I want to clarify that my list will be a list of things that were personally huge for me in my own exploration of my “queerness” and not necessarily a Queer Lit 101 primer (for which I am not very well equipped to provide but know plenty of people that can! :) ) I’ll also try to include a little bit of why each piece was so monumental for me so it can help you gauge if you are interested in looking at it.

Also, bear in mind… I’m still of a generation where things were still a bit bleak and my list relfects that. So much has changed in the last 25 years, it astounds me. Not to say that it is all easy breezy these days, but it’s considerably more hopeful than it used to be on the acceptance front.

With that said, here’s the list!

Writing

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee WilliamsI loved all of Williams works and was considered kind of strange by my friends for it. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I felt like he was writing in a secret code that I could just barely make out and if I just stared harder, it would make complete sense to me. I feel absolutely robbed of my own history that it would take until I was in college to learn that he was queer and that so much of the coded language that was resonating with me was an expression of that experience. I earned one of my top acting marks for playing Brick in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. They said my physicality was positively divine. A drunk self loathing gay guy who had been in love with his best friend? I wasn’t acting. I was literally living it at the moment. :p

Becoming a Man & Borrowed Time by Paul MonetteI feel like these two books should be required reading in any sociological class that looks at minority lives or queer studies class. Paul Monette documents his life in two segments. The first being from birth until he meets the man that would be his husband. Borrowed Time documents the HIV/AIDS crisis and losing his husband along with so many friends. They are literally like huge gut punches of big, heavy emotional things. But they are so good at documenting where our community was pre-HIV and what happened to literally wipe out an entire generation of gay men that I feel like everyone should read them to just acknowledge this piece of our collective history/story and understand the period from the mouth of a survivor of it. His shorter pieces in other collections, particularly “My Priests” were well worth reading as well.

The Transfiguration of Benno BlimpieA one act play that is deeply disturbing, completely riveting, and utterly shocking in how clearly it lays bare the desire for love and sex as a fat kid and the harm caused by abuse of said fat kid, as we watch Benno buy his family home and lock himself in and eat himself to death. Note, while not specifically gay in tone (it’s more about his weight and quest for love from a world that hates him), there’s a rape scene in it that is pivitol and for many gay kids…including myself…all too familiar.  It’s why the play resonated so strongly for me as a fat kid who survived rape but had to deal with a lifetime of shame around it that almost killed me. This play needs trigger warnings all over it though. Fair warning. :p

Bent by Martin ShermanDirecting this play was literally my coming out in college. A play about a gay man that is made to do something horrific so he can get a Jewish star rather than a pink triangle (because he knows the pink triangles are treated the worst in the camps) is made to do physical labor with someone who wears his pink triangle proudly. The two of them fall in love (and even have sex) without ever stopping to look at each other. There’s a shot of me holding up the pink triangle shirt with a smug look on my face because I was told not to direct this show and I did it anyway and had my actors literally standing toe to toe with blue haired old ladies as they verbally described homosexual sex and had orgasms…. and every performance had standing ovations so I knew I would get away with having done it. :p

Movies

De-lovelyA musical show about the life of Cole Porter that is both incredibly sad and awfully inspiring. Love is a complex emotion and doesn’t always fit inside of the Hollywood script of one man/one woman forever and ever. The Wedding BanquetI’m starting to realize a lot of the stuff on my list is about love being complex. This one fits that as well. A well told story about family and love that is all the more surprising, given the time period it was written in (while states were rushing to ban gay marriage and the Defense of Marriage act was enacted) and I feel like it is completely relevant to today.Check ItThis is actually a really recent film but absolutely deserves a place on this list. A documentary about the gangs of trans and gay kids on the streets of DC who figured out that alone they were vulnerable but together they could rule the streets…and so they do. PrideGod, I love this movie. A brilliant cast depicts the story of one piece of how gay rights came about in the UK. I wish I could show this movie to everyone and make them understand that sometimes it takes being willing to hold your hand out first, sometimes to people that would never have held theirs out first, to really create change.

The Celluloid ClosetA must see documentary that explains our place in cinema up to at least the 90s.

Well, that’s a few of them anyway. We’re about to hit our stop at Kyoto so I have to stop. Let me know if you watch or read any of them and what you thought!